Someone asked on another toy forum why we don't have free shipping anymore...and I responded....thought it'd be good to have the same info here.

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We noticed that not a lot of people had been using the "Free Over $100" shipping the past few months. Basically, no one is ordering much over $100 these days unless it is some major release. Times are tough for both us and our customers, and orders have been getting smaller and smaller.

Since we had a promotion that was basically no benefit to most of our customers (those that order under $100 at a time), we decided to sit down and figure out a way that we could do something that *could* benefit the majority.

If you haven't noticed, shipping rates have been going up. And up. And up. The new rates for USPS that took effect on January 4 are especially harsh on our international customers (more on that below) but domestic rates too have been steadily increasing too over the past few years.

We decided a cheaper shipping rate would be something that would be good for more of our customers than the Free Shipping Over $100. That means on most orders we are literally paying part of your shipping. On larger orders (or, say those shipping to HI or AK) we're paying a big chunk of the shipping out of our pocket and out of our profits. And you know what, we're glad to do it. But doing that basically means we can't reasonably afford to continue to offer Free Shipping over $100 too. We thought about, ran the numbers....and it just wouldn't work out.

So...in the end, we tried to adjust to changes in the economy and shipping rates and do something that was good for *most* of our customers. I'm genuinely sorry you feel that you can't shop with us anymore because of that, but we've gotten overwhelmingly positive responses from a lot of customers and we're going to continue the promotion as long as it is feasible for us to do so.